LOST: Further Instructions [SPOILERS]

Previously....

It's interesting the bits and pieces they chose to show us in the "previously on LOST" bit.  There were a couple of things I never noticed before, too.  Can't tell me they were put in there accidentally, either....  The roundup included, notably:

• Jack and Locke discussing how the "island had brought us here."
• Jack's discovery of the Pearl and his disillusionment with the "mission" of the button.
• How his life was useless as pushing the button, and he was going to be free of it.
• Eko throwing the Jesus stick under the blast door (missed that the first time!)
• The green smoke that started flowing in the hatch.  What was that from?  Totally missed that the first time around, too.

Raining Jesus Sticks

We start the episode with Locke awaking, albeit hazily somewhere in the jungle.  He hears something moving through the brush, which turns out to be Desmond.  He's running from something.

He looks up at another noise, only to have Eko's Jesus stick nearly fall on his head.  So how long has he been out there?  And how (HOW!) did Eko's staff get up in the tree, or in the air, and why did it wait to fall until Locke woke up?!

He runs back to his tent, and starts dismantling it, and heads off in a rush towards Eko's incomplete church, with a questioning Charlie in tow.

But John is unable to speak!  (There's a biblical parallel there and I have to find/remember it...)  John pantomimes to Charlie, "I need to speak to the island."

We apparently go away for a while, and come back to John writing to Charlie, "I need you to stand guard at the sweat lodge."  He's built a functional Indian sweat lodge, and inside the structure of Eko's church (how's that for a bit of symbolism?)

At this point you should start thinking about John's character (yes we've already started the flashbacks, we'll get there) and about faith.  See, John Locke is on a quest, a quest for faith in, well, something.  He wants to believe in something.  First it was the "island", opening the hatch, then the mission of pushing the button, in past flashbacks it was his father's love, that "Henry" was who he said he was, and as we'll see in this flashback, acceptance and family....

Spirit Guides

So here's where the show takes on that surreal, "what the hell is going on" nature that makes LOST, well, what it is.  John enters the lodge (after a nice little rant by Charlie) and ingests a rather large portion of something.  We're never explicitly shown what.  Was it something he made from the heroin from the plane? Something else entirely?  And so starts the fun.

Boone appears to him.  Yes, that Boone.  It's pretty obvious that it's not really him, but rather John's psyche talking back to him (with a little chemical help.)  He reminds John that he's "the sacrifice the island demanded."  Of course John is still speechless, and is told that he'll be able to speak "when he's got something worth saying."

More interesting is the last remark about "bringing the family back together...."  He tries to move, but his legs aren't working again.  Boone points to a wheelchair.  "You'll be needing that" or something.

Suddenly they're in the Sydney airport.  "Someone's in danger, and you've got to save them."  We see all of the usual suspects, Claire/Charlie/Aaron, Sayid/Jin/Sun, Hurley, Desmond, Kate/Sawyer, and Jack getting swept by a TSA agent Ben.  None of these are the ones though, "there's nothing you can do for them."  Boone tells John that he has to "clean up his own mess" and then appears at the top of an escalator, which John must crawl up, getting bloodied in the process. 

John arrives at the top of the escalator only to find Eko's staff and a pool of blood.  A more-bloody-than-before Boone tells him he has to "clean it up."  I thought that was a nice allusion to Eko's cleaning up of the spilt blood back in the hatch after Libby and Ana Lucia were shot.  It had to be intentional.  Where Eko, the priest, was busy cleaning up someone else's mess....

Then oddly we see briefly the face of a roaring animal, which we'll find out was a polar bear, and John breaking out of the lodge.  He finally has something worth saying, and tells Charlie, "I'm going to save Mr. Eko's life."  And then we go to commerical....  I suspect it's not the last we'll see of Boone.  Or of Shannon for that matter.

A couple of notes here.  First, the only part of Eko John sees in the airport vision was the staff.  At least if he was anywhere else, I didn't see him.  Didn't see anything else of note in the airport.  I'm sure there were lots of things there, I was too busy looking for people instead of numbers and stuff.  Second, what connection is there between Boone and the polar bear?  I took the vision of the polar bear tied with Boone to be a reference to the old native American "spirit guide" animal bit, what with the sweat lodge and all.  There's got to be something more to that.  Third, what's the connection between that crashed plane that killed both Boone and Eko's brother?  Sort of a "common denominator" for John and Eko that is making them into what they are?

So we come back from the break to find John and Charlie tracking Eko.  They find his cross (formerly Eko's brother's) and some blood.  To which John seems to know what's happened.  Eko's been dragged off by one of the island's polar bears.

More tracking, blood trails and tufts of bear fur, and they come across a torn-up boar carcass.  The bears must be close.  Sure-and-if the brush doesn't start moving, and John flings his Bowie knife...

...right into Hurley's canteen.  Dude!  He tells John and Charlie about the events on the dock.  Gotta love Hurley's reaction to the news they're tracking the bear.  "Bear? What Bear?!"  Another bit of info is tossed out by Charlie, about him watching nature shows, and polar bears being the "Einsteins of the bear community."  More on that toward the end.

What's in there? Only what you take with you.

They track the bear to a cave.  John goes in alone, with his knife, a torch and a can of hairspray (where'd that come from?)  He philosophizes a bit about destiny and that it's his to go in there, and not Charlie.

Turns out this cave is big.  Really big.  Bigger than you'd expect.  Big enough that there's got to be more there than just a bear.  Sure enough, John stumbles across a rusted Tonka dump truck.  A child's toy.  Nice way to just throw something in like that.

He continues his spelunking and finally comes across a pile of bones and rags, one of which has a faded DHARMA logo on it.  Eko is there.  "What are you doing here?" "Cleaning up my own mess."  "You've had a few too many messes." (or something) and suddenly gets dragged away by the bear who's hiding behind a rock!  John gives the bear the "flaming hairspray to the face" and the bear disappears.  Where to?  Is there only one bear left?  More questions!  Nicely done CG on the bear, too.  Not your average polar bear, this one resembles a grizzly moreso than a polar in my opinion, at least in the face.

They get Eko out of the cave and drag him off towards a stream, where Charlie goes to fetch some water.   John must still be under the influence, as Eko tells him, "You can still protect them, you can still save them.  You are a hunter, John."  (tied to the flashback, which we'll get to.)  But when Charlie returns Eko is still out cold....

They manage to drag Eko back to the beach camp...

Got Any Clothes, Brother?

So after leaving John and Charlie, Hurley continues to make his way back to the beach.  He hears some rustling in the weeds, "Bear? Is that you?"

It's a naked and confused Desmond.  He woke up like that in another part of the island (away from John? close to? Is that why we saw him running at the beginning?) without his clothes.   The hatch "burned off his underwear!"  Hurley gives D a big t-shirt, and they head off together.

Desmond shares the story of what happened in the hatch.  According to D, the failsafe key "detonated the anomaly" and caused the hatch to implode.  Interesting remark by Hurley, "you're not going to turn into the hulk or anything?"  Desmond then says something about "John's speech" where he talks about "saving Jack" and whatnot, which of course hasn't happened.  He's obviously confused that Hurley doesn't know what he's talking about, and they carry on towards the beach.

While Hurley's telling everyone about what's happened to Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, and what he's seen, and what's happened at the hatch,  John, Charlie and Eko show up.

John goes into "take charge" mode and starts telling everyone how they're going to go after Jack and save them.  Now, Hurley's reaction to this is two-fold.  One, he knows that they're not supposed to do that.  The Other's explicitly told them not to.  He strongly disagrees with John, but won't speak up to that effect.

Two, he realizes that this was the speech Desmond was talking about earlier.  "Whoa! Deja Vu!"  Seems our Welsh brother may have gained some superpowers after all, but is off skipping rocks at the water's edge.  And that's where the show ends.

Guns and Groceries

Now, the flashback of course has to do with one John Locke, and tells us more about his need for faith, and more importantly, how the island has given it to him, and how it's changed him.  Now I'm not sure where in time this flashback fits into the rest of Locke's back story.  Is this supposed to be before or after the Dad-and-kidney saga?  I don't think it matters too much, though.

A hillbilly-ish John picks up a hitchhiker in his old-and-busted pickup.  Just some kid who needed to get out of where he was.  I'll skip the details on this first part, but they get stopped by the local fuzz, we find out John's carrying a crapload of (legal) firearms, and they go on their way.  Of note is that one of the handguns appears to have what looks like a police insignia (or something) on the grip, and the cop appears to notice.

John takes "Eddie" back to an orchard, what looks to be some sort of hippie commune or something, complete with an Indian sweat lodge.  It's for finding out if you're "a farmer or a hunter."  "Which one are you?" Eddie asks him...

...and a greenhouse.  He invites Eddie to stay, and we meet Mike and Jan, the one's "in charge" of things.  It turns out that the whole "commune" thing isn't far off.

Looks like John is once again trying to find his place, to find something to believe in.  John says grace before dinner, so at least at one time he was a believer in religion.  He thanks the powers-that-be for helping to make him stop being angry.  (So maybe this is after the kidney-extraction bit?)

Now is it just me or does "Mike" look awfully familiar?  The first time we see him I got this "where have I seen him before?!" vibe.  Not sure if it's related to the show or just a general thing....

Flash forward (within the flashback) to John and Eddie in a barn, they pass a woman, and Eddie remarks that "Lizzy" likes him and he should go after her.  Now, call me crazy, but was that supposed to be "Libby?!"  Elizabeth==Libby==Lizzy??  They rather purposefully do not show her face, and by the looks of her, it could be her....  reaching a bit? Maybe.  Thought it was too obvious not too.

So Eddie starts asking questions about the greenhouse.  What's going on? Why do they need so much fertilizer?  He wants in on whatever they're going to blow up, to which John just laughs.

Skip forward again.  It seems that they're growing some serious amounts of rather decent-looking weed in that greenhouse.  More importantly, it turns out that Eddie is a narc.  Doh!

Farmer or Hunter?

So yet again John's desire to find the good in people, to believe in them (as with his Dad) backfires in his face, and threatens to screw up everything (as it did then also).  He tells Mike and Jan that he'll fix it.

He and Eddie head off into the woods to go hunting.  John pulls his rifle on Eddie.

We also learn why he picked John to get him into the commune.  "Why did you choose me?!"  At this point the conversation begins to sound vaguely familiar, and you can almost imagine Eddie dressed in rags... "He hadn't been there long.  '''They' decided you were 'amenable to coersion.' You're a farmer, not a hunter."  And John can't pull the trigger as Eddie goes off into the woods.  Wow.

Wrapping This One Up

Again, wow.  This was LOST at its best.  Better than the previous two by leaps and bounds.  We gain some serious insight into the character of John Locke.  He's driven by his need to believe in something, anything.  We also see how that faith in people and beliefs has been misguided time and again, and how it causes him no end of problems.  First with his father and fiancee, now with Eddie and the commune.  Later with the Swan and the button, with "Henry" (leading to Ana Lucia and Libby's demise, and eventually the situation with Jack, Kate, and Sawyer.)  Finally with his completely misguided belief that the Swan was a pointless exercise, destroying the hatch and nearly killing him, Desmond, and Eko.

Of course we also see that there is still one thing left he believes in, that just might be the key.  The island.  The island has given him back his legs, it's turned him into "the hunter" that he always wanted to be (remember that's why he went to Australia in the first place.)  His faith in the isl

Questions.  More questions! More new questions! Will it never stop!?

• What's going on with Eddie back at the commune? Will we see the rest of that story?  I feel that's not quite over yet.
• Why are the polar bears on the rampage?  Related to the hatch implosion?  Is there just the one left?
• Just how big is that cave?  What else is in there?
• Who do the bones and DHARMA clothes belong to in the cave?
• More importantly, who did the toy truck belong to? Why was it there?
• Does Desmond now have some sort of clairvoyant abilities?
• Will Hurley do anything to try and stop John from going after Jack's bunch?
• Have we seen the last of Boone / John's "spirit guide?"
• Could the bears and the "smoke monster" be related?  The way Eko was getting pulled around looked awfully similar to how John was pulled around.
• Just how smart are these polar bears?  They're the "Einsteins" remember, and the Others had great interest in them.
• Was that Libby back at the commune? What's her connection to all of this and why does she seem to keep showing up?
• Why and how did John, Desmond, and Eko escape the hatch implosion unharmed?
• Where did Eko's staff come from?
• What was that blues tune that started off John's flashback? Is it relevant?
  

I'm sure there are more.  One thing I have to say is it seems like there are a lot more commercials this season than in last.  And a lot longer breaks.  Maybe it's just me noticing them more.

Next time it looks like Sawyer gets the needle treatment for planning his revolt....

Sorry that was so long, but there was a lot of material to digest this time around!

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